Commercially manufactured cigarettes are paper tubes filled with shredded tobacco and a filter. They come pre-packaged in packs or cartons. Historically, smokers turn to commercially manufactured cigarettes for their tobacco and smoking needs. The rising cost of commercially available cigarettes, however, has forced smokers to look for more cost-friendly alternatives. One alternative is to roll cigarettes using manual or electronic tobacco rolling machines.
Rolling cigarettes is more economical than buying commercially manufactured cigarettes. Two cartons of cigarettes cost roughly $160. By rolling tobacco into cigarettes, smokers can obtain roughly two and a half cartons' worth of cigarettes for a fraction of the cost. Furthermore, smokers can determine the number of cigarettes they wish to roll in each instance rather than buying cigarette packs with a set number of cigarettes in each pack.
Various types of manual or electronic cigarette rolling machines exist in the market. Examples include the Top-O-Matic Cigarette rolling machine, Premier Supermatic Cigarette machine, Shargio Cig-a-matic Cigarette machine and many others. Operating a tobacco rolling machine is relatively straightforward. A smoker places loose tobacco onto the tobacco rolling machine, slides a generous amount of tobacco into the chamber on top of the tobacco rolling machine, places an empty cigarette tube over the exit chamber, and then by pressing a lever or button, packs the tobacco into the cigarette tube.
Though the process of rolling a cigarette is straightforward, it is also imprecise. To ensure that the tobacco is sufficiently packed in the cigarette tube, smokers generally load a generous amount of loose tobacco into the chamber. Consequently, loose tobacco often spills out and onto the table or the floor. When rolling several cigarettes at a time, the process quickly becomes messy.
Furthermore, excess tobacco dries up and accumulates inside and around the sides and chamber of the tobacco rolling machine. The excess tobacco is inadvertently packed into later cigarettes, thus adversely affecting the quality of those cigarettes since the excess tobacco is brittle in quality and cannot pack properly. Additionally, the residue accumulates, interferes with the rolling operation, and damages the tobacco rolling machine. As a result, smokers must periodically clean the inside components of the machine, which is an arduous task. Furthermore, excess tobacco is wasteful, and negates the financial benefit of rolling tobacco into cigarettes.